Cool last night. Lene likes fresh air but we kept the hatches and ports closed. We got a late start this morning, 9 am, and it cost us adverse tide until the last eight miles up the beautiful St. Mary's River, which was a delicious engineless broad port reach to Horseshoe Bend, with diminishing wind that gradually slowed us from eight to four knots as the headlands on either side cut off the wind. Before this, out in the Potomac, the propeller rattle reappeared and we motorsailed with main and small jib. It was slow at first with light wind and then there were 25 knots, but on our nose, requiring us to beat our way down the Potomac. It was Friday and we saw our first substantial river traffic. A tug was pushing a heavily laden barge in Kettle Bottom Shoals Channel. I called and he asked me to stay outside the channel, which I had planned to do anyway. Also about four cruising sailboats and about ten fishing boats dragging vanes to spread out their lines; they take up a lot of room but we had no close calls. Your photographer was inattentive; sorry.
Horseshoe Bend is roughly circular and about two thirds of a mile in diameter, with water in the teens almost to its edges. On its SE side, near where we anchored in 16 feet of water with 100 feet of snubbed chain, is the waterside sailing center of St Mary's College. We are center right. Lots of kids out on skiffs, SUPs, and kayaks. Free use of the school's dinghy dock. A most welcoming place. The school is celebrating its 175th anniversary and has only 2000 students; Lene and I attended much larger schools. St. Mary's is
an "honor" college of the University of Maryland. It has the only eating facility in the area, its cafeteria, where you can get all you can eat for $13 for dinner. But with graduation on our lay day, we had their last supper, burgers and dogs. We actually attended the graduation ceremony, why not. Rashad Robinson, director of The Color of Change, a million member strong on line civil rights group, gave an address and received an honorary doctorate degree. We stayed until the roll call of the names of the 430 scholars who were awarded their BAs was begun and then toured the campus, which was mostly locked up. We could hear but not see the speakers and a lot more people were seated to the left. The Bend is in the background left. A lovely setting.
Across the road from the college is "Historic St. Mary's City", which was the capital of the Maryland colony from 1636 to 1695, when they moved the colony's capital to Annapolis. Don't get this place confused with the St. Mary on the St. Marys River at the southern edge of Georgia, where we celebrated Thanksgiving.
This is the frame of "a lawyer's house" in the former, and possibly future, historic city. It is there to mark where the house was. If they get money they plan to rebuild it as they have some of the houses, stores, a barn a church and the meeting house.
One of the best features is the Dove, built to resemble a supply ship that accompanied the settlers in 1635. This one has a diesel, hidden away in its bowels, and GPS as backup to its octant. It actually sails, once a month, in the St. Mary's River, and once a year it goes further, such as across the Bay.
Here is the Dove's Bos'n, Jeremy, a retired navy corpsman. We enjoyed talking with each other.
The colony was founded by Catholics who created the first experiment in what our Constitution now calls "the free exercise of religion". But colonial rule was influenced by the religious war in England between Protestants and Catholics, and the experiment was short lived, when the tides of the war turned.
Here is my land docent, (Is it Gretchen, I'm so sorry I forgot your name and Lene discarded the paper on which I wrote it!),
soon to graduate from St. Mary's with a Masters in Education and return to teaching HS history. The Historic City might become another colonial Williamsburg or Jamestown but is suffers from a somewhat remote location. They are conflicted between two methods of restoration. The expensive way requires mega doses of expert historians to get it right and craftspeople with knowledge of and access to period materials and tools. Much cheaper is to erect a structure that looks kinda like what they think the old building looked like. A complicating factor for them is that the land was put to other uses in the intervening centuries, such as a tobacco plantation with its own greathouse in the 19th Century.
I had never heard of the St. Mary's settlement and it is a very interesting place to visit and easy for sailors, near the mouth of the Potomac.
Our last night, we experienced a 35 knot thunderstorm. I put on instruments and sat in the cockpit to check against dragging, but we were not, and once having sustained winds of that strength, we relied on the fact that the anchor had dug itself in deep, and called off the watch for the duration. Just a bit lumpy out there.
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